Reverse Transfer of Segmental Features: Scrutiny of Iranian EFL Teachers’ Speech

Transfer studies has yet been imbalanced in addressing bidirectional cross-linguistic effects and far from conclusive about the effect of exposure. One area of growing interest has been reverse transfer of phonological features between languages with distinctive supra-segmental and segmental features. This study aimed to investigate any potential reverse transfer of segmental features from English to Persian in Iranian teachers of English. The study was guided by the premise that teachers’ long pedagogical experience might have impacts on their segmental sound system. To the objectives of the study, a sample of ten proficient English teachers along with a comparison group of ten teachers of Persian with little or no recent exposure to English participated in the study. Their performance on oral production Persian tasks involving sounds with crosslinguistically distinctive features including ت/t/, پ/p/, ر/r/, and ‘ و’, was closely examined by three educated native speakers. The findings suggested that only in sounds ت/t/ and پ/p/, when located initially and in ر/r/ when placed after vowels reverse effect of English segmental features were identified. In other word contexts, variously inconclusive differences were also found. The paper will discuss the findings in detail and set forth relevant implications for transfer studies and language learning.

Keywords:

REVERSE TRANSFER , SEGMENTAL FEATURES , CROSSLINGUISTIC , IRANIAN TEACHERS OF ENGLISH